"Millions upon millions of years before had risen upon earth, the central areas of this tremendous ocean were empty, and where famous islands now exist nothing rose about the rolling waves. Of course, crude forms of life sometimes moved through the deep, but for the most part the central ocean was marked only by enormous waves that arose at the command of the moon and wind. Dark, dark, they swept the surface of the empty sea, falling only upon themselves terrible and puissant and lonely." Chap. 1, p. 2

"Toward the end of the master cycle, when the western islands were dying and the eastern were building, a new volcano pushed its cone above the surface of the ocean, and in a series of titanic explosions erupted enough molten rock to establish securely a new island, which after eons of time would be designated by men as the capital island...